Sheets of resinous compositions have found widespread use as decorative and wear resistant coverings for a wide range of products. For example, decorative coverings can include coverings for flooring, walls, ceilings, desks, tables and countertops. Additionally, such resinous compositions can be incorporated into surface layers on leather, fabrics, paper, wood, metal and glass, or used in upholstery, drapery, and clothing materials. Sheet materials can also be made with chips or other particulate material.
Additionally, seams are created when two sheets are joined in the application of resinous sheets to a floor. The seams can create an unappealing visual. The healthcare industry typically requires a seamless flooring product for sanitation reasons since seams can trap dirt and germs. To achieve a seamless flooring product, seams can be heat welded by typically using a welding rod formed from a vinyl product. Often, it is desirable to have a matching patterned weld rod to help hide the seams when the floors are installed.
Many methods have been employed to make a through-color visual which extends all the way from the surface down through the entire wearlayer in an uninterrupted fashion. Such methods include through-color printing of inks or plastisols into sintered dryblends or other aggregate mixes, while others lay up entire layers of various types of mix components. This can be done on conventional roll press lines or with stencils to create patterned visuals. In still other instances, surfaces may be interrupted. Some manufacturers choose to emboss patterns and print inks, either valley print or flood and wipe the sheet with coatings of various compositions to create different decorative visuals. Some float materials in fluids and deposit the material as wearlayer slurries, and still other techniques are used to create various differential gloss visuals. Many times the visuals are random and sometimes they are geometric.
In other cases, the visuals may not be through-color, but may be made as printed layers with subsequent protective coating layers or calendered layers to protect the decorative flooring print image. In such cases, many times there is a scrap backing layer beneath the printed image to reduce costs, or there may also be a calendered base layer. These structures may be either homogeneous or they may be layered composites. In these cases, it is advantageous to come up with a pattern weld rod that matches these non-through-color visuals and patents are pending to describe this process. The visual of the seam for these floors does not camouflage the seam very well when a through-color rod is used on a non-through-color flooring structure; the converse is also true.